. . .
“I don’t know why I’d deny it,” Linus says. He glares right at Maria. “Fine. Is that what it takes to scare you? I’m wickedness itself, you b—. I’m evil. I’m the doom of your little world. I am Linus Friedman Evans, herald of the end, so give me your best shot, you filthy alien nanny —”
He stands up straighter. He glares at her. He turns his head very far to the left and then very far to the right because he’s never actually learned how to spin it all the way around no matter how intimidating it would, under the circumstances, be.
“But don’t you dare lay a single finger on my friends.”
“Oi!” says Jane.
She is glaring at Linus. Edmund is glaring at Linus. But it’s Tom who acts.
Tom has walked out into the room. He is stomping right past Maria. He shoves the gunbrella barrel out of the way as he walks past, because he remembers that it has a two-shot charge. He stands right in front of Linus.
He looks his little brother in the eyes for a moment. He takes two fistfuls of Linus’ collar.
“You never,” says Tom. “You don’t ever, you little snot.”
“What?” Linus says.
Then Tom lets go.
“You be Linus.”
“. . . oh,” says Linus.
He deflates.
. . .
Tom turns on Maria.
“He doesn’t have to be,” Tom says. His eyes are intense. “He doesn’t have to be evil. He doesn’t have to be the Devil’s skin. He can just be him, no matter what you or he or anybody else says. So you shut up with your stupid death rays that don’t do anything and your ‘oh, you really are, aren’t you nee nee nee’ and you leave my little brother alone.”
Maria shrugs.
“I just wanted to know if I should set this thing to ‘holy,’” she says, mildly; but there’s two shots in a charge, and Tom’s standing right there, so she fires.
“Also,” says Tom, calmly, “As a general life lesson, never let a boy adventurer walk right past you and touch your gun. That’s just not cricket!”
. . .
Billows of smoke fill the kitchen.
Tom takes Linus’ arm. He drags him towards the door.
“But,” says Linus. “But. But. She can set it to holy. She can kill me. I could die.”
“No,” says Tom.
They stagger through the smoking ruins. They meet up with Jane and Edmund. Edmund is swallowing the smoke, gulping it down into his wolf-stomach, to keep a little space clear for them to breathe.
“We’ve got to get to Amelia’s study,” hisses Jane.
“Got it,” Tom says.
“But I could die,” says Linus. “I mean, wouldn’t that bite the Devil’s butt?”
“There’s nothing good about biting the Devil’s butt,” says Tom, as Peter, were he there, would almost certainly confirm.
. . .
They break into Amelia’s study. They burst open the secret compartment in her desk. It’s an open secret! They heave out one of the brown paper packages at the back. It’s tied up with string.
Jane rips off the string. She opens the package.
“It’s a veritable pharmacopeia of pills and alchemical substances!” declares Tom Friedman.
“Jackpot,” smugs science adventuress, Jane.
. . .
Swiftly they boil water in the bright copper kettle. They mash up woolen mittens, Mouser’s whisker, and the petals of the rose in a big glass bowl. They throw in ingredients from the package at random.
“It’s important to use drugs responsibly,” Jane says, breaking one pill in half before adding it to the bowl.
“And only as a doctor directs!” Linus confirms.
They pour boiling water over the mix, on the theory that space princess assassin nannies are basically like doctors.
“Well,” says Jane.
“Well,” agrees Tom.
“It’s a marvelous immortality elixir!” Jane says. “Bottoms up!”
. . .
“. . . ladies first,” says Tom, after a moment.
They stare at the lumpy mix for a while.
“I don’t need it,” says Linus. “I mean, technically.”
“Give it to Edmund!” Jane declares. “He’ll eat anything.”
“Can eat anything,” says Edmund. “Can.”
Jane makes faces.
“And it’s not even tested,” Edmund says. “It’s not like I’m a hunger singularity. I just have wolf-gut. It’s like cat-gut, but wolfier.”
“Fine, whatever,” says Jane. She picks up the mixture. She hefts it to her lips.
. . .
The door to the study slams distractingly open.
Maria is standing there. She has patched her space gun back together with duct tape and umbrella glue. It is blinking red in its unhappiness but it is stable. It is set halfway between the mundane and the sacred; between mortal death and a blast of holy light.
It isn’t whining. It’s already chimed.
This gun is ready to disburse all sacred death and endings.
“I wouldn’t drink that,” says Maria, “if I were you.”
Jane looks at her.
“Once you’ve been an immortal for five hundred years,” says Maria. “Heaven would send a terrible finger to destroy you. And if you survive that, Jane, even if you survived, it’d send a terrible fire and wind to destroy you another five hundred years after that. There’s a reason there aren’t many Taoist immortals around, Jane. It’s the casualty rate!”
. . .
Jane hesitates. “I don’t want Heaven to destroy me,” she admits.
Linus glances at her.
“I know, I know!” she says, flailing one hand in his direction and almost spilling the Marvelous Immortality Elixir. “But I don’t!”
“That’s quite all right,” Maria says. “You won’t have the chance.”
She pulls the trigger.
B…
. . .
Then, finally, lowering her head, Maria manages, “You’re not dead either.”
“I guess I’m a Taoist immortal,” Jane says.
“You can’t be a Taoist immortal!” claims Tom. “You’re a girl!”
Maria fires again. A rippling wave of holy death splashes off Jane’s chest.
“You are a Taoist immortal,” Tom exclaims.
. . .
Maria doesn’t bother charging the gun. She just fires it, again and again. The red light blinks infra-red, then ultra-red, then finally a furious gun-wroth carmine. Her umbrella fumes with its agonies. A beeping sound arises from it, escalating ever higher in pitch until it is an unholy shriek to counterbalance the spiritual glory of the holy setting of the gun.
“No!” cries Maria. “No! I will not! I will not be the space princess assassin that never killed anybody! Die! Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, why. won’t. anybody. Ever. Just. Die?”
“There were all those people in the other houses in our neighborhood!” says Tom.
“It’s all your fault, Jane!” cries Maria. “They will come for you. They will kill you. They will raze your world, Jane! The Fan Hoeng will destroy you. You, you, you. This world, all to end you!”
She is howling. She is broken. She sinks to her knees. She holds her umbrella up above her head. Then, even though it is indoors, she opens it.
The gun explodes.
There is dust, and there is rubble, and the ceiling falls.
. . .
It takes a while for them to sort everybody out. Linus is bleeding pretty badly, because there was a lot of holiness in that boom. Tom used a science escape, of course, but he’s still got some serious being dizzy going on. It isn’t until they’re all there with Mouser curled up on Jane’s stomach muttering mews that she sits up and she realizes, “Edmund! My God, Edmund! Did he get out?”
“It’s OK, Jane,” says Edmund.
He crosses his legs. He sits down beside her. He gives her the kind of look that only somebody whose heart is in a wooden box can give.
“I ate the death,” he says. “I ate the holiness. I bound myself a little tighter to the wolf, and the wolf to me; and now I am hungrier, now I want to eat you all, I mean, just a little. But I won’t. Because eating people is wrong.”
He hiccups just a tiny bit of the sacredness of death; and somewhere in the waft of it is the sound of an angel’s trump.
“Oh, Edmund.”
. . .
Jane blinks away her tears. She pulls herself over to sit against a tree. A tree-house bulks invisibly overhead.
“I’m sorry I tried to get you to drink the Marvelous Immortality Elixir,” she tells him.
He pats her head.
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